Leo Gaggl

With a background as an agricultural engineer and a lifelong passion for regenerative and local food systems, Leo brings a unique perspective to the project. He has spent years working in software development, building the kind of database-driven web applications that are now called “full-stack.”

For the past eight years, his focus has been on leveraging low-cost, long-range sensing technologies (LPWAN) to support sustainable and regenerative agriculture. As an active member of the Internet of Things (IoT) and open data communities in Australia, he was one of the first initiators of The Things Network in Australia, a global, open, and decentralized IoT network. His work has always been driven by a passion for open and collaborative efforts to create public infrastructure networks.

His work is driven by a desire to create tools that not only improve farm operations but also help to account for environmental externalities and build greater trust and provenance in our food system. He has contributed to discussions around Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN) and agricultural technologies in South Australia through the Growing Data Foundation, always with a focus on open-source principles.

Watch this space for some unique integrations of sensor networks in GrowGood, as Leo brings his passion for open-source IoT to the world of regenerative agriculture.

Beyond Money: A Contribution Economy for GrowGood

Part 3: Tokens, Mutual Credit, and the Art of Building Something Together In Part 2, we laid out how GrowGood plans to stay financially viable without selling out to venture capital: direct community support, professional services, a non-profit foundation, and cooperative feature development. It’s a solid, well-tested model—slow finance for a project that is deliberately refusing to chase explosive growth. But money is not the only way to build something worth building.

Funding Freedom: An Operating System for the People Growing

Part 2: Building a Regenerative Economic Model for Open Source AgTech In Part 1, we painted a picture of a different kind of Agricultural Operating System—one built on trust, transparency, and technological sovereignty. A system where growers own their data, connect their own hardware, and use “glass-box” AI to gain insights, not receive orders. It’s a compelling vision. But it prompts the elephant in the paddock: if we reject the growth-at-all-costs venture capital model, how do we keep the lights on?

Breaking the Digital Fenceline: A Smarter Foundation for Farm Operations

Part 1 - How Open Standards and Trust are Reshaping AgTech There’s a buzz in the air, a hum of servers mingling with the smell of rain on dry earth. The conversation, happening everywhere from investment boardrooms to the local pub, is about the “Agricultural Operating System”—the Ag OS. It’s a slick vision, often painted by venture capital, of an AI-driven, seamlessly integrated technological revolution that will finally “solve” the farm.

Doughnut Economics and GrowGood

Introduction Kate Raworth’s “Doughnut Economics” presents a compelling model for 21st-century prosperity, one that rejects the endless pursuit of GDP growth in favour of a more balanced goal. The “Doughnut” itself is a visual framework representing a safe and just space for humanity. It consists of two concentric rings: The Social Foundation (Inner Ring): This outlines the basic standards of living—such as food, water, housing, and political voice—that no one should fall below. The Ecological Ceiling (Outer Ring): This represents the nine planetary boundaries, such as climate change and biodiversity loss, that humanity must not overshoot to protect Earth’s life-support systems. The goal is to operate within the Doughnut’s green ring: the space where we can meet the needs of all people within the means of the living planet.

A New Future for Farming: How GrowGood Measures What Matters

The sun is rising over Barb’s market garden as she plans the day’s work. With a cup of coffee in hand, she knows today’s harvest is more than just fresh produce. It’s about getting good food to local families, improving the soil for next year’s crops, and building a business that will last. This isn’t just a romantic ideal; it’s the future GrowGood is being designed to help build, one where every action on the farm contributes to a verifiable, transparent, and fair economic and ecological story.

GrowGood's Greenprint - Our Technical Journey with Valueflows and REA Accounting

G’day! Ever wonder what it takes to build software that truly understands a farm? Not just the profits and losses, but the health of the soil, the value of shared work, and the intricate dance of a regenerative ecosystem? That’s the challenge we’re tackling at GrowGood. Our journey to build a transparent, open-source AgTech platform has led us down a fascinating technical path, guided by the robust principles of Valueflows and Resource-Event-Agent (REA) accounting.